The Devil Inside
by WerewolvesAreReal
Summary: Matthew Murdock has been Catholic since before the accident. It defines him.


**A/N: I'm basing this on the new Netflix-series Daredevil, just so you know.**

* * *

The strangest thing is, he never remembers how it starts.

It isn't a family tradition, is the thing. And some people – most people, really – think the answer is obvious as soon as they learn of his childhood. "Ah, an orphanage," they say, in tones full of knowing. And if he is foolish enough to mention the nuns, well.

But it doesn't start there, either.

Battlin' Jack Murdock is not, and has never been, a religious man. When Matt is eight he crosses the street one morning, looking up at the bright gleam of a cross that peaks over the pinnacle of a church. The front of the structure is bright and towering, all stained-glass windows and white bricks hovering over cracked sidewalks. It seems out of place is the neighborhood of his birth, and he's not sure if it's beautiful or gaudy.

Once, the Murdock's came to America over an ocean from Ireland and registered themselves on Ellis Island as a family of Catholics. That was years and generations back, but Matt knows this, and he asks his father, "Why don't we ever go to Saint Malachy's?"

"They don't want us there."

Battlin' Jack flexes his red-scarred knuckles. Then, reaching down, he ruffles his son's hair. And they walk on.

So maybe it's this, then; that on the nights Jack Murdock slinks back to his leaky apartment, disheveled and beaten, his son refuses to believe one more lie from the man's lips. Jack says many things about himself. He says he is big and dumb, only good for fighting. He says he is a harsh man. He says he is not a good father. These are all lies, Matt knows. His father is so, so good, but wrong about everything that applies to himself. So maybe, too, he is wrong in thinking that God will not accept a man stained by the blood of the ring.

He must be wrong about this. After all, there has to be some fairness in the world.

* * *

Jack is a gruff man, by all accounts; but when Matt suddenly starts showing up to dinner with a battered book of _The New Testament, _tiny with translucent-thin paper, he only says, "Reading's good, kid, but wait 'til you finish eating."

He doesn't say anything, either, when Matt takes to mouthing verses under the rickety light that swings from the ceiling, squinting down at too-thin letters while Jack nods off over his beer. At night, Matt clasps his hands tightly and stutters over clumsy, childish prayers, and sometimes he speaks loud enough that Jack can hear him say, _"and protect my father, Lord, he's a good man I promise - "_

When Jack asks, half-resigned, "Do you want to go to mass?" Matt could not be more thrilled.

The old women coo at him and the men say "what a good child, so enthusiastic, you did a fine job, Jack," so that Jack walks a little straighter, a little prouder. Never-mind the solemn chants, the hail-mary's, the slow ritual of sitting in the pews and rising and falling during congregation. This, the way Jack looks at him, is probably Matt's favorite part about church.

Except one day, he can't see Jack's face anymore.

When he's nine the congregation must find something new to coo about, because after the accident Matt's room is full of get-well-soon cards from the whole church. Or that's what Jack tells him, anyway. He hands each stiff piece of paper to Matt, one at a time, so Matt can run his fingers over the rigid lettering and designs he can't see.

"Stupid," Jack says.

"It was a nice thought," says Matt, and pretends for awhile that he's gone deaf, too, and can't hear his dad sniffing.

Jack says he'll be able to read again, one day. Only differently. "With little bumps on pages," he says. "Braille." He has a piece of paper with Matt's name in Braille, given to him by one of the doctors, and he lets Matt feel this too. "They have all sorts of books in Braille, Mattie. You can still read."

Matt runs his finger over the bumps, then again, slowly, slower, slower. It doesn't feel like much of anything to him. He feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

But he needs to be strong, for his dad.

"All kinds?"

"Sure."

"Do you think they have Braille bibles?" Matt asks.

Jack snorts. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'm - I'm pretty sure that one's been translated by now."

* * *

They do, in fact, have Braille bibles, but these are huge and span multiple editions. They buy only one. Matt learns to read Braille on the first book of the Douay-Rheims Bible, huge and incomprehensible to Jack.

"Sometimes I just think you must have memorized that book," the man marvels. "I don't understand how you can read this, Mattie. You're amazing, do you know that? Amazing."

"It's not so hard. Not once you get used to it."

"Amazing," the man repeats.

He learns to do other things, too. Like stitch up a cut by pressing his fingers slowly over the skin, hearing every hiss and wince Jack makes. It's a game of trial and error, only with high prices, and when he's done Jack says, "Matt, I ask too much of you."

"Did I do it wrong?"

"It's perfect," Jack says. "You can stitch a man blind."

And he starts to cry.

* * *

At church, they say the devil tries to trick the world into thinking he doesn't exist. This is a lie, says the priest. He exists everywhere, all the time. Sometimes, he can't be seen, though. His influence is pervasive but invisible. But he is none the less the damaging for his lack of evidence.

Matt understands this. It is an easy idea. He knows all about things unseen.

* * *

Battlin' Jack Murdock dies ignominiously in a back-alley, and Matt suspects it is his fault.

This is later, though, when he thinks back to strange conversations and looks at the money in his bank-account. When it happens, as it happens, he sits in an alley and touches his hands over the blood-coated face of his father.

The blood is nothing new. Jack Murdock is covered in blood all the time, and Matt frequently is the one to help clean him. So he recognizes the distinctive lumps of his nose, the scar under his left eye. Matt's throat clogs, though. Because Jack Murdock is silent and still. His blood is not moving.

He is dead.

Matt prays to God that it isn't true and this prayer must not be answered, because the police come and take him away, muttering "Jesus, Jesus, Chist Almighty, someone get him - "

They take him away screaming "Dad, Dad, _God, _Dad - " and clawing at the cops with hands that smear them with blood.

* * *

At St. Agnes' the nuns are kind but strict. Not as uncompromising, though, as people would say. They are kind to him. But they do not understand him, do not respect him. "Be careful, be careful," they always say. They drag him from one room to another when he walks, and have a nun escort him everywhere, in case he hurts himself. He wants to tell them that his dad is Battlin' Jack, that he can take care of himself. He wants to say that shouldn't they expect the lord to take care of him?

He wants to say, he has the devil in him, doesn't he? It entered when the dead blood was soaking his hands, and never left. So why are they, these holy people, so eager to guard a devil?

He knows the devil exists. He feels it under his skin. Before the orphanage – before his dad's death – the world was a blot of darkness. He endured it, and was learning to thrive in it, because Murdocks always learn to thrive in the dark places. But now the world is different. It's loud, and bright in the void.

In the abyss, he sees hellfire.

It isn't red, like people say. It's blue and white and shocking, a vague almost-there crackle against the back of his head. Not quite his eyes. He doesn't see it, not really, but he _feels _the fire tearing him apart. Tearing him down.

The devil has a special interest in him.

(And when an old man comes to him, an old man with voice like gravel and a fire behind his mouth, Matt isn't sure if it's salvation or just a way to prove everything he's ever known.)

* * *

Stick leaves because Matt cares too much, which. Well.

Matt meditates every day, listening to quiet sounds and the beat of his own heart to center himself. At the church he touches holy water to his body, breathing deep like he's nowhere at all, and he imagines he can feel a soft spark of power beneath the cold. Or, perhaps this is his imagination.

As he grows, he defends himself because no one else will. Not really. They will coddle and smile and reach out to him, sometimes, but they will not know him, and they will not want to. At the orphanage people say he has a forked tongue, the devil's tongue. "An acerbic wit," says his teacher for maths, who likes Matt and is also very pompous. Matt snorts. "No, definitely the devil's tongue," he says back, and affronts the man into silence.

But he learns how to use this, too, and soon they say _silvertongue. _Honey drips from his words. It is important to learn how to talk to people, to know people, he thinks. He tells himself this is true, which it is, and especially so for a blind man.

But the devil is the prince of lies and he remembers.

* * *

At college his roommate's name is Franklin Nelson.

"Foggy. Oh, god, Foggy, I told you that, remember? Never call me Franklin, I feel like a president or something. Or a turtle."

"A... turtle?"

"A turtle," says Foggy firmly, undeterred. "With bad hair."

"I - "

He had a plan, really, to make his roommate into a sheepish mess who would give him the run of the place. But Foggy Nelson is not the sort of easily-manipulated, boring (or even wild) college roommate he has been expecting. He is so, so much more fascinating, and Matt doesn't know quite what to do with that.

As he's unpacking, footsteps come up behind him.

"I didn't know people actually had rosaries," Foggy says, blunt as he is about everything. "I mean, outside movies with vampires and stuff."

"Well, at least you know I'm not going to suck your blood in the middle of the night."

"Hey, that's actually pretty reassuring. You're pretty pale."

"I wouldn't know."

Foggy just snorts instead of becoming awkward, which is one of the things Matt immediately likes about him.

"So, the rosary?"

"I'm Catholic."

"I'm not," says Foggy immediately. "But, cool. As long as you're not, like, into the whipping-on-the-back thing."

"The... what?"

"You know, how monks strip and whip themselves and scream and then act like it's some huge religious ceremony? Because I might not be okay with that."

"You mean... self-flagellation?"

"Yeah, that. Is that the name?"

"That's, ah, a bit old-fashioned. Catholics... don't generally do that anymore. Generally."

"Gotcha. Gotcha. I mean, religious freedom and all, but, blood on the carpets, possible death, unpleasantness."

"Uh, yeah," Matt agrees. "That – that wouldn't be good."

Foggy claps him on the shoulder. "Awesome. Kudos to you for good life choices. Hey, if you're done unpacking, how about we hit up the pizza place across the street?"

* * *

It's finals week, and Foggy should probably be here, with Matt, studying. Instead Matt is alone, and the silence is oppressive. He doesn't want to be here, running his half-numb hands over books that are almost memorized. He breathes deeply, willing himself to concentrate, but the only effect of this is to make the sound of his own heart pulse through his ears.

Then, slowly, he hears it.

It drifts in slowly, and at first he thinks it's in his head. A soft, light sound that brushes at his thoughts. He drops his heavy textbook, standing up and walking to the room's wall. He presses his ear to the thin plaster.

They're playing music at the church down the block.

A hymn, maybe. Or something else undefinable. He has never heard this song, he is sure, but it sounds so familiar that it almost aches. He slides down to his knees, fingers running along the wall like he might grab the notes and clutch them to his chest.

It's beautiful.

Flutes and clarinets, and the low murmur of a piano. Sweeping, triumphant chords that rise and thunder in a chorus of sudden knowledge. It breathes through the air like a dream, then dies just as quickly, fading, whispering to caress the edge of his hearing. He sways against the wall, yearning for more, the last lingering notes trailing sweetly at the edges of his ears.

"Matt? Matt!"

He's pulled back to Earth rudely.

"Fuck, shit, are you okay?"

"Foggy?"

There are hands grasping his shoulders. When did Foggy enter the room? "Matt, talk to me, are you hurt?"

"I - " Matt reaches a hand up up to touch his face. His cheeks are wet. "I – I'm fine – it... it was just so nice."

"What?!"

"The music," he says, without thinking. "Can't you hear it - "

He can't hear it anymore, even. But he won't forget it.

There's a pause. "Are you – are you _high," _asks Foggy, mixing incredulity and relief.

Matt laughs a little. "Sure," he says. " - high as the sky," and if he laughs a little strangely, well, Foggy doesn't need to know why.

* * *

Here is an idea: lawyers are snakes and liars and demons in smart suits. Everyone knows this. So it must be accurate.

"We're going to do something good, Matt," says Foggy when they graduate, and Matt hopes this is true.

They move back to Hell's Kitchen, and as they travel Foggy says, "Graffiti everywhere, man. There's one now."

"What's it say?"

"'Hell's Kitchen – making the best devil's since '29'. Was Hell's Kitchen made in '29?"

"No. But that was the start of the Depression."

"Ah, right."

* * *

Landman and Zach is a prestigious firm. But the place has a bad stench, and walking the clean, shining halls leaves a bad feeling in Matt's gut.

Everyone is very accommodating. The place is accessible for the blind, with small Braille fixtures outside the doors under room-numbers. He has never heard a negative comment about himself, and no one seems to begrudge his Braille documents or the slow way he meanders through the halls, tap-tapping his way over the even floors. Which would be all very fine, except he always has a sneaking feeling that people are patting themselves on the back for being forward and progressive, for accepting the 'poor blind man' into the fold despite his differences. The place chafes.

It's the sort of attitude that he sees reflected in regular behavior toward both clients and opponents in court. "This isn't what I imagined when I wanted to be a lawyer, Foggy," he says one day.

"Yeah. Well." Even Foggy doesn't have much of a rebuttal for this; it isn't what he's imagined, either. "That's life, I guess."

One day Matt is assigned to assist with a team defending a company against accusations of inappropriate hiring policies. They're a relatively large computer company and haven't hired any females in over fifteen years.

"It's not because they're women," the CEO reasons.

"It just seems like a strange coincidence. A large percentage of your applicants have been women. Some of them have had superior credentials to the men you've hired."

"You can't base anything on that, though. Maybe the interviews went poorly. And culture fit is important, too. We hire based on who will mesh with the company best; just ask the hiring managers. I assure you, we have no desire to exclude anyone. I have no qualms whatsoever about hiring female applicants."

His heart is beating a little fast. Matt breathes a slow sigh.

"...Well, alright," says one of the other lawyers. "So. How are we going to spin this?"

* * *

It's Matt who instigates things, of course, Matt who drags Foggy from the offer of money and cold, heart-chilling cases down to a rickety office with rats in the walls that he doesn't bother to root out. The place will do. They will manage, survive, thrive. Somehow.

* * *

With the move comes new places, a new church. Father Lantom is a good man. Matt's senses tell him this, and he has learned to trust his instincts. But the priest's interest unnerves him. It cannot be good, he thinks, to catch the personal attention of a holy man.

He feels the father's eyes on him. People always stare at the blind man, thinking he can't notice. Matt does. He always does. He wonders if he has done anything to warrant this attention.

If he hasn't, he probably will.

* * *

It's night, and there is a little girl crying across the street.

Matt tries to ignore it, at first. He is trying to sleep, and he ignores people crying all the time; one more girl with a nightmare is nothing. But for some reason he can't tune her out. He hears, very clearly, the sound of a creaking door. It's as though he is standing in the room with them. He hears a shushing sound, hummed from a low male voice. Her father, undoubtedly, coming in to reassure her. The rasp of skin meeting skin, perhaps in a hug.

Then the man says, "Don't make a sound. Don't tell your mother."

Matt's very awake now.

The girl is crying softly. "Shhhhhhh," the man says. There is a groan in his voice. "You look just like her, baby-girl, have I ever told you - "

Matt stumbles from his bed so fast that he falls, tripping over his own entangled sheets. He slaps his hand over the nearby table, groping until he finds his phone.

Fuck. Fuck. What does he say? "I heard it, from a block away? Really?"

But he makes the call, anyway. Anonymously, though the receiving agent seems confused. The girl is still weeping, whispering, "Please, please," sometimes, and the man doesn't care at all.

Matt finds his rosary and clutches it until he hears the sirens come.

But Hell's Kitchen is full of crime, and the cars are slow. The man is done by now – he's slunk back to his bed, to his slumbering wife, without her knowing. The girl's tears have mostly dried, and she is trembling quietly. When the woman answers the door, she doesn't want the police to enter. "This is ridiculous," she says. "Absolutely ridiculous. What proof do you have? An anonymous call? Someone must hate my husband. Get out of here – leave us alone – it's late."

The man's heart beats quick and unsteady until the police go. Then he kisses his wife. "What a horrible thing for someone to say," he says. "What a horrible thing."

"Let's not think about it," she says.

In Matt's hand is the imprint of a cross. He clutches tight enough that the rosary bites his skin down the middle. He bends his head over the blood as he listens to the couple walk back to bed. And he thinks, for a long while, about what needs to happen.

Matt learns the father's schedule, and devil comes out a week later. It is an unfamiliar devil, and one academics of the Hebrew Scriptures might not recognize; a man clad in black, but eyeless, and perhaps this, at least, is appropriate. Someone unseen and unseeing. Yet someone who will punish the unjust, in the only way possible – through blood, through fear, through pain.

"I will know," he tells the man. "Touch her again, and I will know."

It is all the threat he needs.

* * *

"You're so fucking good it's ridiculous, Matt," Foggy says, when Matt declines to go bar-hopping with him and Karen because he has early-morning mass the next day. "Look at you, being all responsible. You know, before I met you I didn't think even Catholics went to mass."

"What did you think it was for, then?"

"Movies?"

* * *

Things escalate quickly, as they do. Suddenly Matt is not just beating up thugs and rapists in back-alleys, where wide-eyed victims take one look at his hard visage and flee from the possibility of yet another assailant. He becomes a one-man assault team, the personal enemy of an organization unknown, unnamed, unnumbered. It feels like something from a comic-book, not his own life. And during the day, when the blood has sluiced down the shower drain and he's wrapped his wounds in layers of gauze, he winces into the office with a white-toothed smile and a neatly-pressed suit. The sun shines on his skin from the windows and Foggy tells him to get an alarm clock. Everything is soft and warm and peaceful.

So when the chaos seeps into his day-life, poisoning the bright times when the devil seems quiet, he knows it is his fault. Fisk is out there, true. But it is Matt who is waging this war, who is bringing Karen and Foggy into the darkness with him.

He cannot turn back. The way is too narrow for that. So he plunges onward, instead, and hopes he has the strength to pierce into the light.

* * *

Matt goes to Lantom when he is thinking about murder.

There are cords twisting around his heart, snakes constricting his airway. He can't breathe, but somehow it isn't the deterrent it should be. He needs to move, to fight, to act. But he is afraid of what will happen if he does.

He asks if the priest, the religious man in front of him, believes in the devil.

"I had this notion," Father Lantom says, "that the devil was inconsequential."

And this is when Matt understands that Father Lantom is a good priest, and a good man, and has the best intentions in the world. But he does not understand. Perhaps, then, the father is truly just too pure to see the devil; his gaze has been obscured by innocence, and he cannot see the dark places of the world, the places Matt knew both before blindness and after.

"Not very Catholic of you," is all he says.

And then Lantom tells him a story of a vicious man. An intelligent embodiment of the devil. "I believe he walks among us," Lantom says. "Taking many forms."

When Matt asks what Lantom would have done, if he could have stopped the man, Lantom just seems confused. "Stop him how?"

Matt does not know what he is asking anymore, who the devil is in his question. Perhaps there are too many devils, too many forms. Or perhaps he is just never meant to know.

* * *

He wants to kill Wilson Fisk and he does not.

This decision seems inconsequential.

Wilson Fisk is behind bars, but things are not solved. Karen is depressed and somber. Foggy is suspicious, and though he grows slowly more accepting of Matt their friendship is forever changed. Darkened. And as for Daredevil -

Daredevil. That is what they call him, now. The devil of Hell's Kitchen, now Daredevil.

There is always another opponent. Someone whose wrongs he must correct. Someone once said, at the orphanage, "Isn't the devil good, then? If he punishes the sinners, Sister?"

"No," said the sister, very severely. "The devil began as something good. But he has been twisted by his own choices. He caused his own Fall. Now, there is no redemption for him."

And now in the twilight of Hell's Kitchen, Daredevil breathes in the scent of prayer-candles and incense over the the empty shell of a Catholic church. In the distance, sharp screams rend the air. Laughter.

He chases the sound like it can save him.


End file.
